Lines
by Goddess Isa
Summary: A one-shot dramatic bit, just one of the things we didn't get because of the ridiculous flash forward


"Hey," I moved my chair closer to the gurney and touched my dad's arm as he stirred awake. "How do you feel?"

"Like Mr. Robot," he answered groggily. "On Oxy."

He drifted back to sleep and I could finally relax a little. Not really relax-I would never really relax again-but I could breathe a little. Stop worrying about my dad. His hip replacement surgery had gone fine and he was going to be okay. His recovery would be slow but I would hold down the fort at Mars Investigations as best I could. My mood alternated between not giving a shit and wanting to bury myself in work for the distraction.

The doctor came in and talked to my dad, talked to me, but I didn't really hear any of it. When Dad was snoring, I asked a nurse to watch over him while I ran home to let Pony out, and instead went to the roof of the hospital for some air.

I haven't been up here since my dad was rammed in that car five years ago. I came up here to think after Logan left. It only took five minutes of staring at the city I had a love/hate relationship with to know that this was where I belonged. It was home.

Looking at it now, it felt foreign. Cold. And once again, staring me in the face was the thing that had made Neptune feel like home in the first place. Or rather the absence of it.

Logan.

Sometimes I hated myself for waiting so long to say yes. Others I wished I'd never come back here. Moved in together. Gotten used to having someone to bounce ideas off of, cook dinner with, yell at.

God, how we yelled.

The amount of time we waste as human beings is staggering. I didn't realize it until everything I had let myself count on was taken away from me.

I was so stupid. Stupid to think that I could actually be happy. That the carousel of fuck ups that is my life would finally break down and I'd get to just live.

If only I'd never said yes. Oh, I did that to myself too. Pretended that if we hadn't gotten married, I might not have been at home, and Logan might not have needed to move the car.

"A bride and a widow in the same day." I'd heard some woman I didn't know say that to Dad at the funeral. It was such a strange thing to hear, since it somehow hadn't occurred to me. Even stranger given that the dress I wore to the funeral was the exact same style I was married in, in black.

The night before the funeral, I must've mumbled to someone that I didn't have anything to wear. The only black dress I owned had been bought expressly so I could wear it to military funerals I attended with Logan. Mac, who had flown in the night after the bomb went off, offered to take me to get one, but I couldn't get off the couch. So she went out with Matty and when they came back, they had the dress.

"It's perfect," I'd muttered, possibly only in my head and not out loud. They couldn't have known that was the same dress I'd been married in.

They couldn't have known that I would hang them next to each other in my closet, bookends for the best and worst moments of my life.

A group of nurses came up to smoke, signaling that it was time for me to leave. I nodded at them and was halfway down the first flight of stairs when my phone made noise. I took it out to see a reminder:

PICK UP YOUR PRESCRIPTION.

Prescription.

Birth control pills.

Fuck.

FUCK.

I hate my house now. I don't think I'll be staying here long. I've been here without Logan when he was deployed, sometimes for months. But the idea of being here when he can't come home is too stifling to bear.

I've mentioned it to Dad more than once, in passing. I'd already planned to move in with him while he recovered from surgery, and this would give me an out to leave the place permanently. A rent hike sounded like a perfect excuse for moving, even though I could probably stay here awhile, maybe even buy it before the price triples, but I can't be here. Dad's place has never felt like home because it was _his_. This place can no longer feel like home because it was _ours_.

"Like riding a bike," I say, ironically, as I unlock the door and pull Logan's bike inside. I like it better than Dad's car for now. It feels safer.

I can't really remember when I was here last, but it looks the same. A total disaster. At some point I vaguely remember trashing things, then screaming at everyone not to touch anything.

The trash stinks, I think as I head for the bathroom. Probably rotting vegetables from something Logan cooked. Everything is a memory of what I had, what I lost.

It's just like I left it, shit all over the place from when I either knocked everything off the counter or threw everything to the ground. I found my birth control pills on the floor by the toilet brush, surrounded by dust bunnies.

_Fuck_.

I must've forgotten to take them around the time the bombings started.

Those fucking bombings. I let them get in my head, let me them manipulate me. If I'd been able to keep my distance….

Opening the case, I counted them and then started counting days. I'd gotten busy and forgotten them before, especially when I was in law school. But Piz and I didn't have the same kind of relationship that I had with Logan. We were more like an old couple. Sex on a schedule, when work and school allowed for it. And Piz was the "backup method" type. He felt as strongly about not wanting kids as I had about not getting married. I don't know if we ever had sex without a condom.

I counted three times and each time, I came up with the possibility that I could be pregnant. I've always been good at math, but sitting on my bathroom floor I couldn't decide if I wanted to be horribly wrong or horribly accurate.

When a bomb intended for you kills your husband on your wedding day, you become national news. There was nowhere I could hide in Neptune, let alone buy a pregnancy test in private. So I pulled my hair back, put on one of Logan's hats and drove to the airport.

I knew there were shops in the baggage area that didn't require purchase of a ticket, so I went to the first one I came to and grabbed a few magazines, some candy and a two-pack of EPTs.

As it turned out I didn't have to worry about a cashier. The shop was employee-free as well as duty-free. You placed all your items in a basket on the register and it scanned them, charged you and dropped them into a bag after you inserted your credit card.

I didn't think I could stand the drive home-or to Dad's-to take the test, so I ducked into a bathroom and peed on the stick. The two minute wait was long enough for me to eat a few Skittles but it wasn't long enough for me to decide what outcome I was looking for. I've never wanted to be a Mom. Never felt the void that being a parent is supposed to fill. Logan made a few offhanded comments that I only felt that way because I thought my mom did, and he may have been right. But right now, I couldn't make myself throw his rusty razors away, so the chance to have a permanent part of him was equal parts terrifying and amazing.

A baby. A baby with his eyes and my hair. His smile and my sarcastic personality.

In my first year of law school I'd been two weeks late. I spent the first week chalking it up to studying stress. After that I googled madly for anything other than pregnancy that might cause my period to take an extended leave.

EPT was the only kind of test they sold at the local bodega. Unlike the ones you saw on TV that were digital or had words and music, EPT was old school. You peed on a stick and got one line if you weren't pregnant, two if you were. Praying and praying in the bathroom at the Starbucks closest to campus, I watched as no lines appeared on the stick. I was only half relieved until I got my period two days later. Most likely study stress, but I was sure all the stressing I did because of that took at least ten years off my life.

With twenty seconds gone on my phone's timer, a single line appeared on the test. One line. This was uncharted territory.

Halfway to a baby. A baby that would be half mine and half Logan's. I wasn't even sure I could picture myself as a mom but I definitely could picture Logan as a dad. He'd been trying to tell me that was what he wanted, but I wouldn't hear him. I wasn't listening.

Wasted time.

Could I even do this? Be a mom? Boys were difficult. They peed all over. I saw Noah pee all over Wallace when he was a few months old.

A boy. A mini Logan. Logan Mars Echolls.

Sixty seconds to go. Still one line.

I can't be a mom. I can't have tea parties with air-filled cups and plan slumber parties.

Lilly and I used to have slumber parties.

Lilly. Before Meg gave birth, a random thought would pop into my head here and there that I might have a daughter named Lilly one day, but it would disappear as quickly as it came. Motherhood wasn't in my cards.

"I like the name Sophia," Logan had announced one night while we drunk-watched an old movie on TCM. "It's pretty, don't you think?"

"As opposed to Fern or Myrtle, sure," I'd answered, and that was the end of it.

Damn. Another signal I'd missed.

Twenty seconds to go. One line.

"If it's positive, I'll keep it," I said in a voice above a whisper. "I'll keep it for you."

A baby. Logan's baby. Sophia. Logan.

The timer buzzed and I let go of the breath I was holding and looked at the test in my hand.

One line.

Not pregnant.

No baby.

Fuck.


End file.
